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A Dance to Remember
A tragedy in which a sixteen-year-old boy struggles to make sense of love in this modern climate. He finds the girl of his dreams, only to lose her.
"... if I waited for an invitation I was a wuss, but if I made a move without an invitation that's sexual assault. What the hell? It was probably better to just sit on the sidelines until I could figure out how humans reproduced... "
"... if I waited for an invitation I was a wuss, but if I made a move without an invitation that's sexual assault. What the hell? It was probably better to just sit on the sidelines until I could figure out how humans reproduced... "
176 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 3, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 14, 2019
What have we done to our children in today’s society? Do this, don’t do that…and yet…we leave them defenseless in so many ways. Michael Patrick Lewis takes us into the chaotic mind of a teen trying to be “appropriate” as he discovers raging hormones and a special girl to share his first love with and it is nothing like what he ever thought it would be…
Get ready to ride the roller coaster of emotions while caught up in the tsunami that is youth. You’ll laugh, you’ll shake your head, and yes, you will cry. Behold the ingenious plan of one sixteen-year-old boy to be able to meet beautiful girls, to be able to touch them without being considered a pervert or, heaven forbid, “inappropriate,” because we all have heard that we each have a respectable space that must not be encroached on. So how can relationships be built? How can one get know another? Sure, mistakes will be made, but for this boy, to make a mistake is terrorizing, or so he thought, until he learned the true meaning of terror and the fragility of youth and life itself.
Michael Patrick Lewis has not sugar-coated anything, he goes full throttle all the way and trust me, it is chaotic and its points to where society has taken our youth while sending mixed signals 24/7. This is brilliant writing, it is raw, untamed and definitely uncensored as we spend some time inside the mind and heart of a boy who represents every teen.
Entertaining, eye-opening and as painful as it is humorous at times. This one is a keeper for sure, because one split second can change a life forever.
I received a complimentary copy from Michael Patrick Lewis!
Publisher: TS Media (October 3, 2018)
Publication Date: October 3, 2018
Genre: Coming of Age
Print Length: 181 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews, Giveaways, Fabulous Book News, follow: http://tometender.blogspot.com
Get ready to ride the roller coaster of emotions while caught up in the tsunami that is youth. You’ll laugh, you’ll shake your head, and yes, you will cry. Behold the ingenious plan of one sixteen-year-old boy to be able to meet beautiful girls, to be able to touch them without being considered a pervert or, heaven forbid, “inappropriate,” because we all have heard that we each have a respectable space that must not be encroached on. So how can relationships be built? How can one get know another? Sure, mistakes will be made, but for this boy, to make a mistake is terrorizing, or so he thought, until he learned the true meaning of terror and the fragility of youth and life itself.
Michael Patrick Lewis has not sugar-coated anything, he goes full throttle all the way and trust me, it is chaotic and its points to where society has taken our youth while sending mixed signals 24/7. This is brilliant writing, it is raw, untamed and definitely uncensored as we spend some time inside the mind and heart of a boy who represents every teen.
Entertaining, eye-opening and as painful as it is humorous at times. This one is a keeper for sure, because one split second can change a life forever.
I received a complimentary copy from Michael Patrick Lewis!
Publisher: TS Media (October 3, 2018)
Publication Date: October 3, 2018
Genre: Coming of Age
Print Length: 181 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews, Giveaways, Fabulous Book News, follow: http://tometender.blogspot.com
February 5, 2020
This genre stradler is narrated from a deftly written first person point of view – vivid, imaginative, remarkably flexible and entertaining. The protagonist is a convincing blend of an awkward (very hormonal!) but endearing teenage boy laced with a considerably more knowing persona.
Amusing, warm, poignant, even brutal, this novella could be described as a tender love-story, or a funny, pointed satire on #MeToo generation youth and society.
Or... But that would be a spoiler.
Irrespective, the story is skilfully unfolded, and interest maintained at a high pitch – provided the older reader surrenders, for the moment, to the nostalgia of thinking like a teenager again. (Whether the story will appeal to an actual YA readership is something I’m no longer competent to comment on.)
Well worth reading!
Amusing, warm, poignant, even brutal, this novella could be described as a tender love-story, or a funny, pointed satire on #MeToo generation youth and society.
Or... But that would be a spoiler.
Irrespective, the story is skilfully unfolded, and interest maintained at a high pitch – provided the older reader surrenders, for the moment, to the nostalgia of thinking like a teenager again. (Whether the story will appeal to an actual YA readership is something I’m no longer competent to comment on.)
Well worth reading!
January 25, 2019
Michael Patrick Lewis’s novella A Dance to Remember chronicles a sixteen-year-old boy’s Quixotic pursuit of sex. Written in the first person by an unnamed narrator, and frequently venturing into the second person with implications that you the reader know exactly what he’s talking about, Dance bears some comparison to Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy's Complaint published during the upheaval of sexual rules in the 1960s. In Portnoy's, the nature of the complaint is explained.
“Portnoy's Complaint: A disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature..."
Dance’s Hero’s Complaint: A disorder in which extreme sexual longings, often of a traditionally perverse nature, are perpetually warring with the today’s shifting rules of sexual conduct.
Our hero chances upon lust/desire when his mom takes him on a cultural outing to the ballet (imagine taking a cat out in the rain). His appreciation for the art of dance is overwhelmed by his appreciation for the women dancers' bodies. He discovers their smooth skin and flawless line of limb. The curves. The beauty. The connection he had previously made between young women (classmates) and arousal reaches new proportions as he sits beside his mother, occasionally sipping from her proffered glass of champagne. The experience is transcendent. He wants to be near those bodies, to hold those bodies the way the—male dancers did.
When he announces his desire to become a ballet dancer, his mom is equanimous, his father rattled Archie Bunker style: Male ballet dancers are all . . .
This doesn't bother our narrator. He sees the advantages of female dancers thinking he is gay. But jettisoning his orientation isn't so easy. Our hero is kicked out of the first studio he tries to join for inappropriate staring. He confesses to his father his motives. His father is relieved and says,
“Look, son. It’s OK to have feelings like that around an attractive female. It’s natural. It’s normal. It’s even OK to steal a glance every now and then, but you can’t stare. If you look too hard, that’s creepy. It makes people feel uncomfortable, and then you lose out on any opportunity you may have otherwise had with someone.”
“But if she’s really pretty, how do I keep from noticing?”
Yes, how?
Enrolling in a second studio, he tempers his behavior, and is rewarded by his acceptance by the other students. As his dreams come true, he meets the astonishing Sara Templeton, a dance student who is also a high-school classmate and rumored to be a lesbian. His relationship with Sara—the delicate probing of her sexuality, his endless doubts and growing confusion about sexual behavior— is the spine of the novella.
There’s some very funny stuff. The lecture of a high-school sex-education instructor to our hero’s class is hilarious. Dance makes its point well about the shifting sands of accepted sexual conduct.
“Portnoy's Complaint: A disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature..."
Dance’s Hero’s Complaint: A disorder in which extreme sexual longings, often of a traditionally perverse nature, are perpetually warring with the today’s shifting rules of sexual conduct.
Our hero chances upon lust/desire when his mom takes him on a cultural outing to the ballet (imagine taking a cat out in the rain). His appreciation for the art of dance is overwhelmed by his appreciation for the women dancers' bodies. He discovers their smooth skin and flawless line of limb. The curves. The beauty. The connection he had previously made between young women (classmates) and arousal reaches new proportions as he sits beside his mother, occasionally sipping from her proffered glass of champagne. The experience is transcendent. He wants to be near those bodies, to hold those bodies the way the—male dancers did.
When he announces his desire to become a ballet dancer, his mom is equanimous, his father rattled Archie Bunker style: Male ballet dancers are all . . .
This doesn't bother our narrator. He sees the advantages of female dancers thinking he is gay. But jettisoning his orientation isn't so easy. Our hero is kicked out of the first studio he tries to join for inappropriate staring. He confesses to his father his motives. His father is relieved and says,
“Look, son. It’s OK to have feelings like that around an attractive female. It’s natural. It’s normal. It’s even OK to steal a glance every now and then, but you can’t stare. If you look too hard, that’s creepy. It makes people feel uncomfortable, and then you lose out on any opportunity you may have otherwise had with someone.”
“But if she’s really pretty, how do I keep from noticing?”
Yes, how?
Enrolling in a second studio, he tempers his behavior, and is rewarded by his acceptance by the other students. As his dreams come true, he meets the astonishing Sara Templeton, a dance student who is also a high-school classmate and rumored to be a lesbian. His relationship with Sara—the delicate probing of her sexuality, his endless doubts and growing confusion about sexual behavior— is the spine of the novella.
There’s some very funny stuff. The lecture of a high-school sex-education instructor to our hero’s class is hilarious. Dance makes its point well about the shifting sands of accepted sexual conduct.
August 31, 2018
A wonderfully sweet read that will have you smiling and many times chuckling at the thought process of sixteen year old, hormonal riddled boy experiencing his sexual awareness as he juggles the sights and feelings of they young women around him. His mother brings him to a Ballet, which is not what he wants to do and hopes that no one from school sees him, but once he sees the woman on stage he notices everything about her. The shape of her legs, the way her body moves, each and every curve. Light bulb moment!!! He wants to take ballet! And with this, the fun for the readers really begins as he struggles with not only the dancing itself, but his wandering eyes and the hormones that keep ricocheting throughout his body. He's in a conundrum. Keep staring and you're a creep, don't look and your a wuss. Say she is hot, don't say she's hot, touch, don't touch. It's all confusing to his sixteen year old mind. But what isn't confusing anymore is the way he feels about Sara. She's easy to talk to, to dance with, to flirt with, and he falls for her just as she does for him. They are partnered to dance at the recital, and they both want to have sex with each other. Of course, things do not always go as planned. But they love each other and will try again.
The story begins with the boy telling the story of himself and Sara, but he doesn't want to talk about how she dies, he wants to talk about how they met and their relationship from that point on. Until you reach the end of the story you find out just how tragically it all ended. A story that from that point on will grip you, horrify you, bring you chills and tears as you read. And you heart will break.
A wonderfully written and throughout story that will entertain and hurt you. I highly recommend this beautifully written dance to remember.
The story begins with the boy telling the story of himself and Sara, but he doesn't want to talk about how she dies, he wants to talk about how they met and their relationship from that point on. Until you reach the end of the story you find out just how tragically it all ended. A story that from that point on will grip you, horrify you, bring you chills and tears as you read. And you heart will break.
A wonderfully written and throughout story that will entertain and hurt you. I highly recommend this beautifully written dance to remember.
September 15, 2018
It's hard to be a 16-year-old boy in modern society. Thoughts go wild when looking at girls. But what is appropriate? What is weird or perverse? Is it true that women don't want to be touched, never ever? Is staring harassment? Does your pure presence make a girl uncomfortable? How can you ever build a relationship with a girl if you're not supposed to approach them?
Our protagonist finds his opportunity in a ballet class. While all girls believe he's gay he gets to know Sara. The attraction between them is palpable.
Reading this novel stirs up an incredible range of emotions: the funny self-reflexions, the sweet love-story, the tragedy at school, their wise and not-so-wise choices, and deep sadness - you'll laugh, you'll chuckle and you'll cry.
Michael Patrick Lewis had been one of my favorite authors even before this book. He has a way of making you feel what his characters feel and his voice is so natural and light-hearted that relating with them is easy. This is his best novel up to now and I hope he'll write many more.
Our protagonist finds his opportunity in a ballet class. While all girls believe he's gay he gets to know Sara. The attraction between them is palpable.
Reading this novel stirs up an incredible range of emotions: the funny self-reflexions, the sweet love-story, the tragedy at school, their wise and not-so-wise choices, and deep sadness - you'll laugh, you'll chuckle and you'll cry.
Michael Patrick Lewis had been one of my favorite authors even before this book. He has a way of making you feel what his characters feel and his voice is so natural and light-hearted that relating with them is easy. This is his best novel up to now and I hope he'll write many more.
March 20, 2019
I loved this book couldn't put it down. A sixteen year old boy knew what he wanted to do after watching a ballet with his mother. His mom thought that after a while he'll forget, but seeing that he wasn't she sign him up to a class. After the first class didn't go well he was signed up to another one where he worked hard not to stare at the girls. At school he saw Sara one of the girls in his ballet class, and soon they became inseparable. Every day after school they practice their routine and the more they practice the more their feelings grew toward each other until they admitted to each other. One day at school the alarm went off and everybody was confused until they heard why. That day was the worst day of his life.
October 19, 2018
This is one amazing author by far. He emailed me about reviewing this novel because I had reviewed another of his novels which I absolutely loved to death.
This one is beautifully tragic love story that will put you into tears by the end. I just love it.
The story begins with the boy telling the story of himself and Sara, but he doesn't want to talk about how she dies, he wants to talk about how they met and their relationship from that point on. Until you reach the end of the story you find out just how tragically it all ended. A story that from that point on will grip you, horrify you, bring you chills and tears as you read. And you heart will break.
5 stars
October 15, 2018
I loved this book. The pace and style were lively and drew me into the story and the feel of the characters. Some really quite serious issues covered in a most sensitive way. The story is of young love and sexual attraction and how confusing everything can be for a young man (sixteen years old) when the rules of play are not clear. Some laugh out loud (in a nice way) moments, some original descriptive in the sexual scenes and a knock you for six ending. I laughed and I cried - a really satisfying read.
November 9, 2018
I wasn’t sure that I’d like this, but I gave it a try because I’ve liked the author’s previous works.
Wow! Glad I did! A quick read, and well worth it. A coming of age story in the modern #MeToo society.
Wow! Glad I did! A quick read, and well worth it. A coming of age story in the modern #MeToo society.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews